


come and knock on my door

by jadeddiva



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anger Management, Based on a Tumblr Post, F/M, Meet-Cute, Tropes, Ultra Slow Burn, like so many tropes, like the entire point of this is tropes, or maybe not?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-14 09:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13586979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeddiva/pseuds/jadeddiva
Summary: Ben Solo has equity in the start-up First Order, and a chance to become the great programmer he's meant to be.  But he's finding that Rey, the engineering major who lives next door, is not helping with that.   Start-up!Reylo AU meets neighbors!AU.





	1. Week 1: Sexiled

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the Apartment AU prompts and because Weezly sent me a text saying Ben would totally keep going in through Rey’s balcony just to piss her off. Thanks to Dana/SupremeDumbass for letting me yell at her about this.

**Week 1: Sexiled, or, We both got kicked out of our respective apartments because our roommates are having sex  
**

It’s 5:30 when Ben gets home, and it’s such a fucking rare occurrence that he almost doesn’t recognize his apartment door in the last rays of the setting sun.  

He’s usually sleep-walking out of his apartment in the morning to hit the gym, and sleep-walking home far too late to do more than microwave a burrito and pass out (working for a start-up was exactly as glamorous as they said it would be).  It’s weird to see the white door he knows so well lit up by anything other than the fluorescent bulb of the outdoor lamp.  He feels disoriented by the orange glow that slices through the iron lattice work decorating the outside his apartment.

Bu then again, maybe it’s not the lack of familiarity with what his apartment door looks like during the day; maybe it’s the length of this week, the hours spent building and rebuilding code until he dreams lines of code and he wakes up to find his fingers unconsciously tabbing the air. There’s a major bug that needs to be taken care of before this build can be committed, and this is Ben’s first major project.  There’s too much on the line here to take it easy. 

But it’s Friday, the build is in for Snoke to review, and Ben thinks that maybe he can catch up on the sleep he’s missed for the last week. Maybe that’s why he shakes his head in confusion as he reaches into his back pocket for his keys.

Or, maybe it’s the sound of music coming from the other side of the door that’s making him wonder if he’s at the right place.

Ben slides his key into the door (okay, right apartment),  opens it a crack.  Florence and the Machine is coming from the barely-used bluetooth speakers in the living room but it’s _his_ living room, that much is true (if Ben knows his roommate, the man has never willingly listened to a female singer-songwriter in his entire life). He cracks the door open a bit more to the sight of his roommate writhing around on the couch on top of someone else.  Just who that is can be determined by the pair of tall Doc Martens next to Hux’s boat shoes and _fuck_ if his roommate isn’t dry-humping Phasma, the only female engineer on their team and –

“Solo, close the fucking door!”

Ben is shoved back into the hallway by his roommate, who has launched across the room with a speed only exhibited when there is only one purple gingham shirt left at the Vineyard Vines semi-annual clearance sale. 

Hux stops in the doorway with one hand on the door and the other on the frame and it’s just - the opposite of acceptable. 

“What the fuck, Hux?” Ben snaps at his roommate, clenching his fist at his side and digging his nails into his palm to keep from slamming it at the prick.  “You never said anything about having someone over - “

“It’s not like you’ve been around much this week.” His nasally voice is low and his tone overly-polite and Ben just grits his teeth.  He’s clearly doing this to keep _Ben_ calm, which is ridiculous since Armitage Hux has enjoyed pushing his buttons since freshman year.

Ben snorts.  “We work in the same office, Hux, that’s hardly a reason not to tell me and since when do you bring women home – and why are you doing this in the living room? We have a two-bedroom apartment for a reason – “

“I’m trying to be spontaneous,” Hux says in a huff.  “Women like spontaneous men.” 

He tries to close the door in Ben’s face.

That does not go over well.

Ben sticks his foot in the door, letting his boot bear the brunt of Hux’s attempt to shut it, the pain making his anger stronger.   _“First off,_ you wouldn’t know spontaneous if it bit you in the ass and second, I pay the rent too - just let me come into my own damn apartment and pass out - “

“Find a coffee shop.”

Ben takes a step back in surprise, letting the door slam in his face.  He hears Hux lock the security bolt and he knows he’s screwed.  Unless he climbs over the balcony, he won’t be able to get in and he’s not even sure the balcony door is open to begin with.

He can hear the murmur of conversation – Hux’s nasally tone and Phasma’s rich alto and he just knows, _knows_ he’s going to be called in to talk to HR when something inevitably goes wrong and she turns his roommate in for stalking or something equally vile yet totally within Hux’s wheelhouse.

Ben slams his fist into the door once, then again.  No amount of breathing exercises or visualizations are going to make him regain his composure in light of this childish move on Hux’s part.  They’ve been roommates longer than Ben wants to admit and this is just abject fuckery – he’s got noise-canceling headphones, Phasma has been over before, he doesn’t even care who Hux sleeps with (there have been far worse options than the statuesque Phasma, and he has barely made comments about any of them in the past - )

The music gets louder and Ben rests his forehead against the door, frustrated and exhausted and on edge, breath uneven. 

Coffee shop? Not an option.  The only coffee shops around cater to college students and have shitty wifi or not enough tables to fit his laptop and his coffee and he’s almost better off just waiting it out (it’s Hux, after all - how long can he reasonably last?).  At least h

He kicks the door for good measure, swearing under his breath, when he realizes he’s not alone in the hallway.  To his right is a young couple, hovering outside the door of the apartment next door.  The girl is barely twenty (or maybe older, he always mistakes college kids ages these days) and she’s got her key in her hand and her face is flushed, and her boyfriend’s got his hand on her waist and he’s looking at Ben like -

Like Ben is crazy.

Ben closes his eyes and counts to ten, listening to the girl fumble with her own door.  He doesn’t open his eyes until their door closes, counting his breaths as he tries to calm down, tries to get his breaths even and deep, using his diaphragm.

He doesn’t know his neighbors – he hasn’t ever met them, mostly because he’s always working but also because they’re college students and he’s not.  The only reason he still lives in this town is because this is where First Order is located and it’s a good gig, working at the start-up.  The money is good even if the hours are shit and his boss, Snoke, is a fucking asshole but an assholes with connections who could help Ben one day as long as Ben keeps working, keeps proving himself just a bit more each day, keeps trying to be the developer that Snoke promises he can be if he just tries harder and sacrifices more as he attempts to live up to whatever potential the older man sees in him.

Ben slips his bag off his shoulder, drags it on the ground as he sits down against the latticework.  He can still get wifi out here (one of the few good traits of Hux is his desire to have the best wifi in town) and so he starts up his laptop, takes out his earbuds.  Thirty minutes, right? Thirty minutes and Hux will have embarrassed himself with Phasma and he’ll be able crash in his own bed.  

He’s halfway through an episode of It’s Always Sunny when she arrives.

He hears her, feet heavy on the steps up to the apartments, before he sees her.   Ben slips his earbuds out as she starts walking towards the other apartment. She’s completely oblivious to the world with her headphones on, backpack hanging off one arm but -  he wonders – maybe he should warn her what she might be walking in on? Maybe he should just say something before she surprises her roommate?

(He’s never been good with people, let alone during awkward shit like this.)

(He’s got to at least try.)

“Hey.” 

She doesn’t hear him at first, so he waves his arm in the air, hoping that he can get her attention that way.  It seems to work; for the first time since high school, his long limbs prove useful and she’s looking over at him, slipping her headphones off her head.

“Hey,” she says, looking confused and – oh no – scared.  She’s scared of him because she’s some stranger in the hallway and she’s swinging her backpack down and pepper spray is the last thing he needs tonight.

“Fuck.  Sorry.  I live next door and I’ve been sex-iled and…” Ben drops off, glancing down at his laptop and back up at her.  “I think you may have been too.”

To her credit, this seems to confuse her even more.  “What?” followed by looking at her door and then his, then back to his face.  “Sexiled.”

She says the word like she’s never said it before, with a frown forming on her young face and he has to admit, she’s kinda cute even if he doesn’t know her name.

“Yeah, it’s when your roommate – “ he starts to say with a smirk and she sputters.

“I understand context clues, thank you very much,” she snaps back before looking at the door of her apartment.

Her hand balls up into a fist and he wonders if she’s going to punch the door. Instead she just squeezes it tightly, her hand tensing and then releasing at her side which is a much better coping mechanism that he exhibited earlier. He’ll have to remember that in the future.

“So there’s two people in there?” she asks, glancing at him. “A girl brought a guy home with her.”

“Yeah.”  Ben watches as she screws up her face tightly before kicking the brick wall with her boot.

“Fuck,” she says, and Ben feels her on a spiritual level.

“It’s just –“ the girl continues, looking down at the floor, “I legitimately thought he liked me? I mean I knew he thought I was cute, but I guess I didn’t know he thought Rose was cute and I didn’t know and I wouldn’t have tried - I wouldn’t have - if she had _said something_ \- “

“Not to be a dick, but you don’t have to think someone’s cute to have sex with them.”

Ben points this out like the utter pedant he is, and it doesn’t make things better at all (he needs to keep his mouth shut, needs to just not say the first thing that pops into his head, needs to be better at people and at girls and he can feel his breathing bottom out before becoming shallow once more).

The look she gives him is utterly scathing, and it doesn’t make anything better.

“No shit,” she tells him. 

She looks back at the apartment and he can see the glimmer of tears in her eyes in the overhead light, which has kicked on at some point when he wasn’t paying attention.

He sighs, runs his hands through his hair.  He might be a dick, but he can also at least try to be a human being.

“Look, I’m watching It’s Always Sunny – do you want to watch too?” Ben asks, trying his best to make something out of this shitshow.  “I think I’ve got a headphone adapter in my bag -”

There’s a moment that passes where the girl looks at him, like really looks at him and like she actually consider his offer as an option.  It’s weird, because he’s not so great with people and definitely not great with women and before he’s about to offer a different option, she shakes her head.

“Thanks – I appreciate the offer, but I don’t really want to be here when they finish,” she tells him. 

She turns around and leaves before he can say anything else.

Later, he will realize that he could have gone with her.  Later, he will think of a dozen other ways that he could have handled that circumstance instead of watching her turn and walk down the stairs.  He could have offered dinner, or a movie, or something else that a man with better social skills than him would have thought of in the moment.  He can chalk it up to exhaustion, or being poorly socialized, but the reality is that he’s exactly what Snoke says he is: a fucking nerd who can’t do anything right the first time.

(It makes sense, then, that Ben’s Slack goes off with a direct message from Snoke, who has some sort of asinine idea about the code from earlier today.  He’s well-into fixing whatever Snoke wants to add when Phasma slips out, heels in hand.  It’s not until he’s in bed, falling asleep, that he realizes he never introduced himself, or that he never found out her name.)


	2. Week 2: Creeper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why are you following me?” Rey responds fiercely, pepper spray extended towards the man.
> 
> “Dude, I live here too,” he says, and there is tension in his voice, like he is barely controlling his anger. “We’re neighbors.”
> 
> Rey freezes. “We are?”

**Week 2: Creeper, or, I saw you on the bus and now you’re following me home - you’re a total creeper oh wait you’re my neighbor sorrrrrry**

 

Thursdays are always the worst. 

By the time Rey’s finished her final homework problem, it’s after 7 and she’s exhausted. She’s been on campus since at least 8am, lecture after lab after recitation, one after the other after the other until everything blurs together (it could be worse: she could have morning classes on Friday too).     


With a sigh, she puts her graph paper back into her binder, tucking her homework into a folder in the front so that she remembers to turn it in tomorrow.  With another exhausted exhale, she slings her backpack over her shoulder as she stands up, pushes her chair back under the study table as she hurries out of the library and towards the bus stop.

She knows she’s cutting it close, that she shouldn’t have stayed on campus so late, because the Western Avenue express waits for no man, woman, or tired engineering undergraduate. 

Rey doesn’t like relying on the bus. She’d rather live close to campus but the options are either shabby Victorians with interment radiant heating in a part of town known for drug deals gone wrong, or overpriced luxury condos for Greeks who need to be close to their houses but not so close they can’t drink underage.  Neither are her cup of tea, and the pickings were slim when she and Rose first looked for a place to stay.  

_ Rose.  _  Rey pushes the thought of her roommate aside as she walks to the bus-stop that will take her five miles from campus to the affordable apartment complex where she lives.  The one that that caters to mostly young professionals who will pay for a reliable landlord.  It may cost more rent than a shabby Victorian, but Rey appreciates knowing that if their heat is on the fritz, it will be fixed quickly (she’s still a girl from the desert, still readily chilled in this temperate climate).  Living here means she can’t afford a car and so the bus is her primary mode of transportation, but she’ll take it for central heating and air. 

Spring semester has just started so there are lots of students waiting for the bus with Rey.  She knows this will change in a few weeks as students start to skip or drop or decide to do whatever people with means and stability do in their free time besides study (it makes her bitter, sometimes, how hard she works for things that come so easily to others). 

When the bus arrives, she shows her ID to the driver (the perks of a large college town include free public transportation for college students) and tries to slide between other people with their parkas and backpacks.  She’s pretty compact so she manages to get between a girl with a long puffer coat and some international students huddled together in a group.  Finally finding a spot big enough for her, she grabs onto the pole and lets the movements of the bus and the song in her headphone ease her troubled mind (she’s not really looking forward to going back to her apartment, not after - )

The bus stops and Rey pitches sideways, bumping up against a warm body dressed in a black overcoat.  She reaches out, grabs a bicep to stop her forward momentum, and shakes her head. 

“Sorry,” she says, looking up into a face that is familiar and foreign at the same time. 

He says something in return, looking startled before it shifts into something else (also recognition? do they know each other?) but she’s still got her headphones on and Rey doesn’t do small talk.  She lets go, glancing up at the stranger (?) one more time - dark hair, so very tall, long features and expressive dark eyes. 

She knows him, but she doesn’t, and that’s just weird.  She’s didn’t go to high school here, doesn’t really go out much and doesn’t really have friends except Rose and - 

He’s still looking at her, Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Mysterious and the part of her that thinks he looks familiar starts to wonder if the reason she recognizes him is something...unsavory.  Was his face in one of those crime papers Poe buys at the gas station to read before Calc IV?  Is he someone from that party they wandered into last fall? Did she bump into him outside Starbucks and spill some Dark Roast on his foot?

Rey turns up the music on her phone, and shifts slightly away from him, wrapping her arms around her chest, trying not to make any sort of contact with him again (the effort it takes with each sway of the bus is it’s own workout).

Finally - finally - they’re almost at her apartment. 

For the past few days Rey has dreaded returning home, dreaded the small talk and the tension and Rose just trying to return things to whatever sufficed for normal between them.  But now, she can feel the eyes of the guy next to her, can tell that he’s still watching her and she’s just...anything is better than this, even awkward silences with her roommate and the potential presence of her roommate’s boyfriend.

She pulls the stop cord as they round the corner.

The doors open with a blast of cold air and Rey practically leaps off the bus, hand wrapped around her keys.  She slides her headphones off and let’s the lay around her neck, telling herself that she will try to talk to Rose tonight, that she will eat whatever food Rose has made as a peace offering, that she will try to be better than the petty creature she really is.

There is the sound of movement behind her - someone else crunching through the dry grass as they walk towards the building.  Rey speeds up, getting enough distance between her and the guy she knows is following her before turning around.  She pulls her pepper spray out of her pocket and holds it up on the air. 

It is the man from the bus.

His eyes are wide as he takes a step back. 

“Whoa!” he yells loudly in surprise, throwing his hands up.  “What the hell?”

“Why are you following me?” Rey responds fiercely, pepper spray extended towards the man.

“Dude, I live here too,” he says, and there is tension in his voice, like he is barely controlling his anger.  “We’re neighbors.”

Rey freezes.  “We are?”    


That would explain the familiar face, then, but she thought she knew most of the neighbors except the ones that live next door.  She’s never talked to their next-door neighbors: they were already living there before she and Rose moved in, they keep weird hours, and the ginger guy is kind of a dick but the other one seems to never be around (there’s another one, she’s heard his deep voice through the walls before - )

He runs his hands through his hair, frowning.  “Yeah.  I mean, we met last week when we both got sexiled.”

Oh.   _ Oh.    
_

She remembers him now, seated in the hallway, long legs spread out in front of him.  She remembers the laptop, the feeble attempts at trying to talk to her but everything else is just a blur of hurt feelings and hurt pride. 

“Sorry,” she says, lowering her hand.  “That was a bad day for me.”

Bad would be an understatement.    


She hadn’t wanted to believe him when he told her that Rose brought someone home with her but she could, because Rose was Rose.  Friendly and open in a way Rey could never be with all her sharp edges and cautious words.  Rose might be shy but she never failed to warm up around the right company, and Rey should have realized sooner that the right company was Finn.    


Finn, her first friend here, who tried so hard to impress her for the months and years after they first met.  

She remembered the way that Rose had looked at Finn when Rey introduced them, the way that she hung onto every word in a way that only inflated his ego, the way that Finn looked at her - 

“Yeah,” he says, shoving his hands in his coat pockets.  He doesn’t say anything else (she wonders if he was going through the same thing, but can’t form the right words to ask).

  
“Look, I’m sorry I pulled my pepper spray out on you.  That’s not cool,” Rey tells him finally once as she slides it back into her pocket. 

He shrugs in response, hands in his pockets, laptop bag hanging off one shoulder.  “I get that a lot.”

“What?” Rey asks, surprised.  “You get threatened with pepper sprayed a lot?”

He smirks, looks down at the ground, and when he looks back up, the grin is utterly self-deprecating.  “Not really.  I’m just - I dress in black and I’m over six feet tall.  People tend to find me threatening.”

Rey nods - she got that vibe from him and he wasn’t even trying to be menacing (he must be terrifying when he’s angry).

“So what happened? When you left?” 

The air outside is crisp, and Rey’s nostrils burn with each inhale.  She wants to pull her scarf over her face but she feels like that would be antisocial, and she’s trying to be better with people.    


There’s a crease between his eyebrows, a frown carrying down to his mouth and she’s intrigued by the way that he looks at her with something like concern only detached, just a little, from the circumstances.    


She takes a deep breath before the plunge. 

“I just...walked,” she admits.    


It wasn’t the safest, and she didn’t go far - around the apartment complex a few times before heading down the street to the Kroger with the Starbucks that was open late.  She had stayed there, diving deeper and deeper down the Instagram suggestion hellhole, until Rose sent her a text asking if she wanted to order pizza.    


She stayed there until the Starbucks closed, nursing tea long gone cold, until she could stomach going home.  And then, she brought her own pizza.

“Was he a friend?”

The words hang in the cold air.  Rey looks back over at her neighbor, the concerned look crystallizing on his face and  _ oh _ , is it pity he feels for her?  Pity over the fact that her friend slept with her roommate, and has been sleeping with her roommate while Rey stays up late pouring over circuit diagrams, stays up late reading articles so that she can fit research hours into her already busy day because that’s how you get experience and get into graduate school and get a job that makes it possible to always have food in your cupboards?  Is he pitying her, this asshole who lives next door and who she’s only seen twice, who intimidates people just by existing, whose face is an open book (she can read the concern on every line and angle from his dark eyes to his mouth, and it’s making her unsteady)?

“Yes,” she spits out.  “He’s still my friend.  I don’t just give up on people easily.”

He nods, mouth working like he wants to speak but he’s biting back the words instead.  Finally, he puffs his cheeks, exhales a cloud of smoke into the dark night. 

“You’re a better person than me,” he says, not meeting her eyes.  He tips back his head, looking up at the stars as if he’s contemplating his very existence, and she feels a brief, very small bit of regret for her snappish comment.   She tips her head back too, squinting to see any constellations in the light pollution. 

“I’m Ben, by the way.”    


When Rey looks back down, his hand is extended.  He’s wearing black leather gloves which makes him smarter than her in her cheap knitted ones she bought at Walmart for a buck fifty. 

“Rey.”  She takes his hand, and it’s huge, enveloping her in its warmth.  She’s surprised she’s stayed out here this long in the cold but the thought of going back to her apartment is just...not pleasant, and talking to him isn’t so bad.    


“Very nice to meet you under very different circumstances,” Ben says cordially, and Rey can’t help but break into a grin at his words.    


“You’re very formal.”

“Only when I try,” is his response, and he turns back towards their apartments, signaling his own desire to get indoors.    


Rey drifts into step beside him. 

“So...are you in school?” he asks, as they walk towards their building.  

“Yeah - engineering.  You?”   Rey fiddles with her keys in her pocket.  This is a nice distraction, but now she’s thinking about her apartment and her roommate and she doesn’t know if Finn is there too - 

“Nah - not in school anymore,” Ben tells her.  “I’m working at a tech start-up.”

“Are you an engineer?”

“I majored in computer science but mostly do programming now.”

“Cool.”  Rey shoves her hands into her pockets.  “I’m in electrical engineering.”

“Really?” He looks over at her with a raised eyebrow.  “Same department - small world.”

“Yeah.”  Rey tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, suddenly feeling self-conscious.  He’s older than her but not by much, and so she wonders if they know the same people, maybe had the same faculty.  There’s some overlap in the curriculum but not much, and she’s taken some of the programming classes - Java, Python, C++ - on the recommendation of her adviser because it can’t help to be well-rounded when she’s applying to graduate school.

He stops at the foot of the stairs, gesturing that she should go before him and she’s not used to someone being so polite (she remembers, now, how he tried to distract her that night, how he tried to make it normal when it wasn’t) and Rey feels self-conscious again before she decides that he’s clearly trying, like he said, and she’s going to just let it go. 

They stop outside their respective doors.

“Good luck?” he asks, sounding unsure of himself and Rey smiles sadly.

“Thanks,” she says, watching as he opens his door and walks inside.  She can hear him greet his roommate, or at least she thinks she does - their voices are low murmurs behind the closed door and Rey lingers in front of her own door.

She’s already forgiven Rose, already forgiven Finn because even if it hurts - Finn was her friend, and she kinda was starting to like him a little bit more than as a friend, and she was always so flattered that he saw something in her to pursue.  She had tried, in her own half-hearted way, to see if this was something worth pursuing, to see if maybe she should try for a relationship with him (she’s never done this before, never had time or volition, never felt like a relationship is something within her reach) and now -

She’s not mad at Rose, or Finn.  She’s mad at herself, mostly, for acting so stupid.  She wants everything to go back to the way it was, but without all of the effort that Rose is putting into it.  She wants to go to sleep, and wake up, and acknowledge the fact that Rose is dating Finn and it’s just a thing that is happening.  That there’s no fear of offending her because Finn was her friend first, that there are no eggshells being walked on and people being hurt. 

Rey takes a deep breath, and opens the door. 

Rose is waiting on the couch; Finn is not here.  

“Rey! I was starting to get worried, you’re never on campus this late - I made some soup, did you want some?” Rose asks, hurrying to the door and fluttering around Rey with the nervous energy that makes her roommate so endearing. 

Rey closes the door behind her, locks the deadbolt.  She takes a deep breath, tries to center herself in the moment, before she turns around. 

She’s going to try. 

“I’d love some,” she says.  Rose’s face lights up in response, and Rey wonders if maybe things are getting back to the way they were. 


	3. Week 3: Dirty laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The code she is working with so elegant that Rey is immediately envious, knowing she could never do such fine work herself. She wants to know who made this code, maybe send them a compliment for helping her with her work. Rey opens her browser and finds the tab with the code repository. 
> 
> “What the fuck is a Kylo Ren?” she asks. That’s not a real name. That’s, like, some sort of bullshit nickname that Reddit all-stars come up for themselves in some ridiculous name generator, right?

**Week 3:** _ Dirty laundry, or, your laundry got mixed up with mine and now we’re sorting underwear in silence _

 

Rey is running late.

The queue at the library Starbucks was too long when she got in it but it’s been a week from hell - okay, more like two weeks if she’s being honest, neither of them easy and both of them exhausting.   She had fallen asleep on her homework last night, waking up around 3 this morning to find her wrist covered in drool and a little puddle forming on her Calc IV problem set.   


Now it’s after noon, and coffee is less of a want and more of a need.

Sipping her too-hot drink ( _ why do they never listen when she asks for room? _ ), she navigates from Naberrie Library across the pedestrian walkway to the engineering campus, situated on the opposite side of the highway from the rest of campus. She’s late for research group, and she’s nervous. 

Rey is new to the Skywalker research group.  She only joined last fall when Poe mentioned it to her in Circuits II during their group project. 

“You’re pretty good at this,” the other junior had told her.  “The research group I’m in is hiring and I think you’d be a good fit.”

At the time, Rey had shrugged it off but after meeting Dr. Skywalker and some of the students, and seeing that the pay is better than working at Kroger, she applied.  It doesn’t hurt that the experience will definitely help her land an internship, and probably help her get into grad school.  And there’s something about being part of the research group - of working with other people who care so much about the problems they’re working on - that makes her feel like she’s a little less alone.  Hosnian State is a big school, and she sometimes feels like there is never a friendly face in the crowd (not that there was in Jakku, but at least there she knew where she stood). 

She steps out of the way of some guys on bikes, and finally rounds the corner to the engineering buildings.   


She takes the stairs two at a time to the third level, skidding to a stop before turning left and heading to the third door down the hall.  The meeting hasn’t started yet when she enters the room, slumping into the last empty seat around the conference table.  Poe is already connecting his laptop to the projector with Artoo’s help. 

Kaydel, the only other graduate student still on campus besides Artoo,  slides the meeting agenda across the table while Dr. Skywalker finishes responding to an email on his phone.  Rey smiles and mouths  _ thank you,  _ taking a sip of her coffee before pulling out her laptop. 

Rey likes being a part of the Skywalker research group.  She likes everything from their research on making wireless charging more widely available to the other students to Dr. Skywalker himself (she’s pretty sure her fear of fucking up in front of him is what keeps her working so hard).   


“Okay,” Dr. Skywalker says finally, placing the phone face down on the table.  “Let’s get started.”

If Poe’s nervous about his presentation before the group, Rey can’t tell; he’s all swagger, going through his slides with confidence that she knows isn’t faked, because Poe is a shit liar.  No, Poe’s spent his time in the lab and he knows he’s got good data and good conclusions, and it shows.  He’s the best damn undergrad in the department, and he’ll make the group better. 

At the end of the slide show, Dr. Skywalker gives a few suggestions for Poe’s research - mostly new ideas, some areas of improvement, very little negative critique.  There are a few other report-outs from grad students like Artoo and Kaydel, and Rey shares a bit of what she’s working on, before ending the meeting. 

“Rey,” Dr. Skywalker calls from the head of the table, “do you have a few minutes?”

Rey nods.  She puts her laptop back into her bag and zips it up before joining Dr. Skywalker at the door.  He starts off down the hall towards his office and she follows, hurrying to catch up with his quick stride. 

“You know Python, right?” he says over his shoulder, or at least she thinks he says that.  He’s definitely asking about her coding skills, which are not that bad all things considered.

Rey nods.  “Yes, I do.  And a few coding languages as well.”

“Good. I’ve got some ideas about the magnetic fields in the coils Artoo has been tinkering with and I want to you to run the calculations.   There’s a code I haven’t used in a few years that I think would really help you with this - Kaydel can help you download it.  See her before you leave today.”

He stops outside his office door.  “Thanks for your help on that publication, by the way.  Kaydel said you pulled more than your share of the weight.”

“It’s not a problem, Dr. Skywalker,” Rey says, more than slightly embarrassed about the praise. Kaydel made sure to thank her after the paper was submitted, but Rey appreciates that Dr. Skywalker knows how hard she worked.   


He smiles.  “I keep telling you to call me Luke,” he tells her, but Rey ducks her head again.   


She’s not going to start call Luke Freaking Skywalker by his first name.

Dr. Luke Skywalker - hell, the entire Skywalker family - is a legend at this university, and certainly in the College of Engineering.   Anakin Skywalker, Dr. Skywalker’s father, was some crazy genius who built one of the first floppy disk drives in his garage.  When he died, he left a huge chunk of money to the school - enough to help with the construction of a few new buildings, and an endowed a computer engineering chair.  His son seems to be more interested in electromagnetic fields than computers, but he’s made enough of a name for himself with innovative designs that Rey is glad she’s studying under him.  He’s a legend in his own right. 

That alone makes her wonder more about the code he wants her to look at. 

Rey finds Kaydel in the graduate student offices, and when she communicates what Dr. Skywalker wants, the woman rolls her eyes. 

“I know what code he’s talking about - god, that’s ancient.  I haven’t thought about that in years.”

“Is it any good?” Rey asks, and Kaydel laughs. 

“Oh it’s good all right, but I heard the author was a bit of an evil genius,” she tells Rey.   


“Was he another faculty member or - “

“Nope - just another student in the group.  He left before I started, and we used the code for a while before Dr. Skywalker moved on to other ideas.  Artoo might remember him.”  She pauses, and looks at Rey for a moment before shaking her head (Rey doesn’t know what to make of it, so she says nothing and waits).  


Kaydel gives her the link to the author’s GitHub repository with a small smile.  Rey pulls up a chair in the suite and downloads the software (the internet connection here is better than at her apartment) and when she’s done and she confirms that it runs, she packs up her computer and heads out to catch the bus. 

If she steals a mint from the department secretary’s desk on the way out, and pops into the bathroom to make sure that her hair isn’t a complete wreck, well...it’s been a long week.

That, and everytime she rides the bus, she wonders if she’ll see her neighbor again.  She hasn’t seen Ben on the bus since that night, and she doesn’t know why she wants to see him, only that she does.  She’s been thinking about it alot, actually, what she would say if she sees him again.  Would he ask about her roommate? She practically has the entire script in her mind:  _ Things are getting back to normal, I don’t think I need to worry so much, I was never really that into Finn anyway… _

She doesn’t know why, but she feels like he would listen to her without judgement. There are very few people to do that in her life and one of them is now dating her roommate.

He’s not on the bus, and she’s honestly not that surprised, even if she’s a little disappointed.  She doesn’t know much about what he does other than programming - he works at a start-up, maybe? There are a few in town with the university being such a hub of science and engineering - and she guesses that might mean weird hours. 

Rose isn’t home when Rey gets back, which is both a relief and not.  Rey remember’s that her roommate’s got a student org meeting tonight, and then she had said something about meeting up with Finn.   


Things have gotten better at the apartment, as Rey is learning to adapt to the new normal that is a couple and a third wheel, even if it’s awkward (even if Finn was her friend first). 

(She kindof wishes Ben was on the bus.  Maybe it would feel better telling someone this.)

But...he wasn’t, and there’s no one to listen to Rey now.  She opens up her laptop and gets to work. 

An hour later, she’s understanding a little more about what Kaydel meant when she called the author an evil genius.  The code is far too clever, giving her information she never asked for but which Dr. Skywalker probably wants, making her brain spin out into possible ideas that she starts jotting down in a nearby notebook.

It’s so elegant that Rey is immediately envious, knowing she could never do such fine work herself.   She wants to know who made this code, maybe send them a compliment for helping her with her work.  Rey opens her browser and finds the tab with the code repository.    


“What the fuck is a Kylo Ren?” she asks.  That’s not a real name.  That’s, like, some sort of bullshit nickname that Reddit all-stars come up for themselves in some ridiculous name generator, right?

A Google search tells her that there’s a Twitter account with that name.  The Twitter she finds is ancient, and she scrolls down through countless tech articles on startups and the First Order (she’s heard that name, thinks maybe they’re located here but doesn’t know much about them because she’s not a programmer).  There’s also way more dudebro shit about technovation than she can stomach - that is, until she finds xkcd and PhD comics and programming jokes buried earlier.  That she can handle.  It’s a long scroll, but it tells her all she needs to know: whoever wrote this code sold their soul to the startup hustle and never looked back. 

She wonders if he (because it’s definitely a he) was a much of an arrogant douche canoe when he worked with Dr. Skywalker as he is now, because that would make so much sense. 

Rey closes her laptop.  It’s a pity that someone who can write such smart code also seems to be a piece of trash.

She stands up and stretches, squeezing her eyes tight and then opening them again to find her laundry basket, filled to the brim with dirty clothes.  At the same time, the alarm that she has set on her phone to remind her about laundry starts to sing.

Rey sighs again.  

 

…

 

Ben is in the kitchen when he hears the door to his neighbor’s apartment slam.  He puts his juice down on the counter, his mind wandering as he wonders which of the two neighbors it is, and wonders if it’s _ Rey.  _

He’s been thinking about  _ her _ way too much lately (he can remember the slant of her chin, the angle of her neck as she looked towards the stars, the way that her eyes softened just a bit - ) and it’s weird for him, the way that his mind keeps going back to her in that moment,  like she is more important than he first thought. 

He hasn’t dated in a while - the only relationships he has outside of Hux and Snoke are with the several Uber drivers who tend to work the early morning hours in this college town - and even without the long dry spell his relationships were brief and tumultuous.  His infatuations with fellow students, various interns or coworkers all ended because he never acted on any of his intentions, never felt the need to disturb his equilibrium.  He has a goal, and equity in the First Order.  The company’s success is his success, and for so long the thought of that kept him warm at night.

And now there is this girl.  And he has noticed her, the length of her eyelashes against her tan cheeks, the strength in her words when she told him she didn’t give up easily on her friends.  There is something about her that has made him look twice, that has forced him to pay attention, and he has no idea how to fucking deal with that.

He sneezes.

He’s working from home today, battling some head cold and napping between intense bouts of programming.  It’s not ideal but they’ve got another deadline looming at work and he would much rather just pass out but he can’t (Snoke would call him instead of just constantly messaging him on Slack). 

When he does drag himself out of bed to answer yet another message from Snoke, it’s late afternoon.  He has no idea of how long he was out, just that his head feels like someone has shoved cotton balls in his ears and he’s disoriented by the sensation. The slammed door in the hallway reminds him of the load of laundry he started early before passing out in a haze of cold meds.

The apartment complex is small - three stories, two units per story, with a laundry room at the bottom.  Ben knows from prior experience that no one does laundry in the afternoon, so he tends to work from home on the days he needs to catch up on it.

When he gets to the laundry room, it’s immediately clear that the status quo has been disrupted.

His clothes have been taken out of the dryer and placed in his laundry basket - not folded, just dumped there by whoever’s laundry is five minutes away from finishing their cycle. 

“What the fuck?” he says.  He stares at the machine as if the timer will tell him something more than what he’s already figured out: someone opened the dryer, took out his laundry, and put it in his laundry basket. 

“What the fuck?” he repeats.  Who fucking does that? What kind of self-righteous twat takes someone’s laundry out of a dryer? He is so skeeved out by the thought that he cringes, his skin crawling and he just - he can’t.  Someone has touched his clothing, and he can’t get more than a twenty minute nap because of Snoke, and he feels like he’s walking around in a fog, his sinuses throbbing with pressure and this is just  _ bullshit. _

The anger, which has been building since he found his laundry in his basket, needs an outlet and so he reaches out, slams the washing machine machine door shut before wrenching it open again and repeating the action and again until he feels marginally better, the sound of the clanging metal echoing in his ears.

“Fuck!” He shouts, kicking the dryer for good measure as it lets out a melodious sound to signal the load is done. 

“Hey!”

Ben turns at the outraged shout and is surprised to find out it’s coming from  _ her _ \- from Rey.  She’s standing in the doorway and she’s got her hands balled into fists and she is  _ pissed _ .   


His anger at the dryer subsides only slightly, replaced at ugly embarrassment that the cute girl he keeps thinking about has seen him like this  - full of anger, totally at his worst, a sick and tired guy who just wants people to  _ not touch his clothes. _

Ben’s face burns and he inhales sharply.  His embarrassment fuels his anger (it’s not like she’s thought about him again anyway - he’s just her neighbor who also rides the bus). 

She crosses the room in record speed, standing between him and the dryer which, he realizes, holds her clothes. 

She’s the one that took his clothing out.

If spontaneous human combustion was an actual thing, it would be happening to him already.

“You just can’t do that - “ she starts.  “You can’t yell and bang on shit when you’re pissed off.   That’s not okay.”   


Ben can’t believe the words out of her mouth. Doesn’t she understand the social protocol that she just broke? Doesn’t she understand how you can’t just do things like that?

“You can’t just take someone’s clothes out of the dryer!” he shouts back. 

“I can if I needed it!” 

He can tell that she’s struggling to control her anger but it’s not working for him and it doesn’t look like it’s working for her either, the way that her cheeks are colored in anger and it spreads down her neck to the collar of her Kenobi College of Engineering t-shirt.  


Seeing the logo just pisses him off more.

“I was using it!” Ben snaps back, making absolutely no effort to control himself.  He is tired, and he is angry, and he is embarrassed - most of all, he is embarrassed.

Rey closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.  “Bullshit - I timed it for one hour.  Your clothes were in the dryer when I came down stairs to start my load, they were still the dryer when the washer finished.  I placed them nicely in your basket -“ 

“ - you dumped them in my basket - “

That’s it.  Her eyes snap open.

“Oh  _ fuck you _ , Mister High and Mighty.  Show some respect for the needs of others.  You can’t hog the dryer and you can’t break machines that other people use and you can’t talk to people like that.”   


She punctuates the last line by wrenching the door to the dryer open and dragging her clothes out and into her laundry basket.   


Ben fumes while he watches her.  Who is this girl to tell him what to do? 

She finishes and closes the dryer door carefully, basket balanced on her hip. Her eyes are wide and her nostrils flare and she is livid, the angriest Ben has ever seen someone who is not his mother, who is not family, who is a virtual stranger -

“It’s not cool to treat people like shit because you’ve been mildly inconvenienced,” she tells him with a final huff before brushing past him and running back up the stairs. 

Ben stares at the door, then at the dryer, and the laundry basket. 

He aims, and overturns the basket on the table with a well-placed kick. 

It’s when he’s picking up his laundry, folding his boxers and his t-shirts carefully, that he realizes how monumentally stupid he is. His outburst is quite possibly the stupidest thing ever over the stupidest reason ever.  He knows he’s ridiculous for not wanting her to touch his clothes (not wanting anyone to touch his clothes, touch his stuff) and it’s just one of the many things that makes him want to become a social recluse because he can’t function in society the way he is, the way he handles being inconvenienced.

His therapist would just frown over her glasses if he told her that he let his temper get the better of him over something this simple.  He’s practically constructing the argument with her in his head, his rebuttals rising to the tip of his tongue - he’s sick, he’s overworked, he’s tired - but she would remind him again and again that there are no excuses when it comes to acting on angry behavior.  That there are literally a dozen or more methods and techniques that they’ve been through to keep his anger in check, to help him identify the situations that will trigger it, that will help him learn to survive in this world.

And Rey - 

All of this happened in front of Rey, involving Rey, Rey with the kind heart and pretty eyes, who forgives her friends and who lectures him on acceptable behaviors.  Rey who he has thought about more often than he should for someone he has only met twice - no, three times now. 

His face flares up in embarrassment as he thinks about her, and buries his head in his hands. 

_ It’s not like she’s thought about him again anyway _ , he reminds himself,  _ he’s just her neighbor who also rides the bus _ .  The neighbor with anger management issues and personal space issues and personal property issues who gets kicked out of his apartment so his roommate can have sex and who is just - 

He is a human disaster.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> February was a fucking tire fire, but thanks Artielu for jumping in to be my brainstorming buddy, my cheerleader, and my beta. 
> 
> This chapter is where shit gets real.


End file.
